Bill C. sent me this link a few weeks ago and I've meaning to blog about it. Go check it out.

I think he's got some good points there, specifically as to what advertising is when you boil it all away. It's an interruption wanting to sell us one thing when we're in the middle of doing something else. This is true. When you go to Needcoffee, there's a better than average chance you're probably not wanting to see an ad for singles dating service. So there's been a huge mismatch between what might be relevant for you to see vs. what you're actually seeing. I think this happens better online than it does in the real world–in "real life," I would constantly be amazed at the offers I'd receive via snail mail. For example, a special deal on replacing the siding on my house–while I was living in an apartment. It just takes a little bit of checking to know that my address was an apartment at the time–and yet here I was getting mail about an offer I simply could not use.

The internet knows where you are just by your IP, so I'm assuming you're not seeing the same ads I am in some instances. But still, it's not working the way it should. So while I agree with some of the author's ideas in that article, I think the answers are a little simpler and less advertisageddonish.

1. Advertising needs to quit being fucking annoying. Yes, I know some people are annoyed by ads on websites. Some sites proudly state that they're ad-free. Some sites give me shit because I have advertising. But believe me, I tried a donation model and it didn't work. And Amazon sales and other affiliations pay, but not enough by themselves. And I have enough traffic where I need a real server, and somebody's got to pay for that. So hence: advertising. If I thought there was a better way, I would certainly utilize it. And hell, if you can figure out a way to convince people to pay a dollar a month to get free access to Needcoffee–tell me. Because I've got enough readers where I would be in great shape. I don't have Boing Boing-level readers, but we do okay.

The trouble comes when advertising gets annoying. Because then it makes every site look bad. Pop-ups? Bad. Those flash pop-ups that sprawl themselves out between you and the content you came to see until you take an action? Ridiculous. Pop-unders? Baffling. Has anybody actually come across a pop-under that you didn't realize had even opened, looked at it and done anything that would make the advertiser any money? Ever? Or did you just close it. Think about it: somebody paid to annoy the shit out of you and make you not want to buy their product. Is it any wonder online advertising is supposed to be dying? It deserves to die if it's that dumb.

I don't allow any of that nonsense on Needcoffee. I was using these video ads that looked like they might do all right–then the company in question altered their code so that it had to auto-play with the sound up and didn't warn anybody it was happening. So they're gone. My rule is to not allow anything on my site that would piss me off were it in use on someone else's site.

But bottom line: online advertising needs to actually advertise and not annoy.

2. Clickthroughs make even less sense now than they did before. Ken and I have had this discussion in the past. You don't click through a magazine ad. You don't click through a billboard. And for most of television's existence, you haven't clicked through a commercial. But yet those spots were paid for. Why should sites not be paid to simply have an ad appear? If there's an ad on Needcoffee that reminds you a movie is coming out this weekend you want to see, and you go snag a ticket without clicking through…I should provide that service to the advertiser for free? It makes no sense.

3. Online ads need to take a clue from television ads. When television advertising started realizing that nobody really needed it around anymore, it started to change. Television commercials wanted your attention but you were no longer, thanks to stuff like TiVo, bound to give it to them. So what did the smart companies do? Make amusing advertisements. Make commercials you would actually want to watch. How many viral videos in the last month you watched were actually just really good commercials? I've probably seen more commercials in the past year that I have in the last ten, because somebody sends it to me as a viral thing online.

Online ads need to be funny, weird, and engaging. I can't think of a single banner or square ad or anything that I've thought, "What the hell is this?" and clicked because it looked like something fun or entertaining. If anything it's just some product that I was interested in anyway, and so I clicked through. But the ad did nothing to sell me on the product. People don't have to look at ads on websites, much less click through. And if they have no incentive to, whether informative or entertaining, they simply won't.

And here's the thing as well, as a coda. I'm not saying I love having advertising on my sites. But until I get that dollar a month from a substantial number of my readers, I have to have something to pay the bills and keep the lights on. I encourage anybody with a bright idea to tell me about it.

Okay, another coda thing. We're all getting acclimated to craploads of distractions now. Your computer, your phone, your Facebook, your e-mail, your Twitter, your whatever-whatever. We're juggling all kinds of crap. This sort of mentality–easily distracted and expecting to be distracted–just seems to me to be ripe for some quality ads that catch the eye. We're all easily distracted by shiny objects and we've decided to pitch our tents in a shiny object factory.

When is somebody going to take advantage of this? Cough. I'd like to take this opportunity to point out once more that my rates are reasonable.